


Stuck in the Middle of... This With You

by veroniquemagique



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 06:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10893567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veroniquemagique/pseuds/veroniquemagique
Summary: About ten years before Grace found herself living with Frankie Bergstein, she found herself trapped in an elevator with her on the way to lunch with their husbands. Maybe she doesn't hate Frankie after all.(A little look at their relationship pre-Gaymaggeddon 2K15)





	Stuck in the Middle of... This With You

Grace walked through the opening elevator doors, and she smelled Frankie before she saw her run in beside her. That woman reeked of marijuana, no matter _where_ she went. At least Frankie was going in the car with Sol, or else she’d be sniffing this smell for another week, as well as finding little mysterious splats of paint on the seats of her car. Or one of those stupid rocks she carries around sometimes.

“Howdy, Grace,” Frankie said cheerily, almost as if she actually liked Grace, like they hadn’t had a silent disagreement ongoing for the past thirty years. Hmph. To be fair, she was probably just trying to make this lunch go by quickly, and Grace couldn’t blame her.

“Hello, Frankie,” Grace replied, barely glancing over at the woman. There was a moment of silence in which she knew Frankie was waiting for her to try to entertain further conversation, but she wasn’t going to indulge her that easily.

“So, how are the girls?” Frankie asked after another few seconds. Oh great.

“They’re fine. Mallory just met a nice young man – finally. He’s a doctor,” Grace steeled herself with a deep inhale. “And Brianna is… well, she’s Brianna. How are the boys?”

“Oh, great! Bud just got into law school, and Coyote’s… still trying to find out what he wants,” Frankie’s smile faltered a little on her younger son’s strange name, and Grace could only imagine it had something to do with his latest drug-fueled adventure- oh excuse her, his self-exploration.

That was that, for now, thankfully. Grace let out a little sigh as she watched the light flick on the floor number, going up one by one. She already hated having to take the elevator, but being stuck in there with Frankie Bergstein only made it worse.

Just as the thought hit her, the elevator lurched to a stop. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Oh… oh no. Fucking _hell_. No, no, no.

“Oh goody…” she faintly heard Frankie groan beside her, but Grace really couldn’t focus on that with the looming feeling that the walls were starting to get a little too close for comfort.

“Grace?” Frankie asked, and she almost sounded concerned about Grace. Hell, maybe she was, because she was Frankie, and Grace was currently clutching the bar behind her as hard as she could manage, with her eyes shut just as tight. “Grace, are you okay?”

She took a step closer to Grace and gently touched her arm.

“Get away from me, you’re too close!” Grace yelled, which made Frankie jump.

“Grace, what’s going on? Are you claustrophobic?” Grace made herself look at Frankie so that she could shoot her the sharpest glare she could muster. It must not have come across as one though, because the concern etched across her face only grew.

“What the fuck do you think?” Grace snapped, slowly lowering herself to the floor of the elevator, curling in on herself a bit as she settled. She couldn’t stay up there, the air didn’t feel right.

“Oh, _Grace,_ ” Frankie sighed sadly, and great, the last thing Grace needed from Frankie was pity. “Does this happen often? How bad is it usually? How bad is it right now? Do you have any pills in that purse that you could pop to make it any better?”

Grace shook her head at the stream of questions. She left her Valium at home, not that they had much effect on her anymore. You go numb to those kinds of things when you use them too often – like vodka.

“Well, darn. I mean, I don’t recommend medicating as a first resort anyways, but I know that’s your whole thing so I thought-” Frankie went on, before frowning deeply and kneeling down beside Grace. Her voice hushed as she softly patted Grace’s shoulder. “Hey, hey, Grace. Look, it’s okay, I’m here. We’ll get you through this, okay?”

“What do you know about this?” Grace muttered. She didn’t want nor need Frankie’s help.

“Bud gets panic attacks sometimes, I know what to do to get someone through it,” Frankie explained, and smiled sadly as Grace looked up at her.

“I don’t know if you couldn’t tell Frankie, but I am not in the mood for your hippie bullshit, right now,” Grace tried to take a deep breath to calm herself down, but it hardly worked.

“Hey! It’s not bullshit. Now look,” Frankie sat down beside her and reached for Grace’s hand, prying it from around her leg. She held it close to her between both of her own hands – her unusually soft hands – and began to ramble on about some art thing she was doing with criminals. Even though she didn’t give a fuzzy rat’s ass about Frankie or her murderers, Grace tried to focus on what she was saying and not the tiny, tiny space they were sitting in together.

“So, anyways,” Frankie continued, closely watching Grace still, “that’s how I got the idea for my newest _pièce de résistance_ , Hitler’s Circumcision.” She leaned in and looked closely at Grace’s face.

“Remember, deep, slow breaths. Come on, in…” she guided, “out… there we go, keep doing that, okay? How are you feeling now, Grace? Has it gone away at all? Do you need me to rub your sternum? I know that always calms me down when I’m upset or scared,” Frankie suggested, beginning to reach for Grace’s blouse.

“No!” Grace pulled her hand away to swat at Frankie’s. “I’m- I’m not okay, but it’s a little better now…” she lowered her head and her voice, “thanks to you, Frankie.”

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Frankie grinned, and wrapped her arm around Grace’s shoulder, giving her arm a little rub. Even if she didn’t like Frankie, she did have to admit that her presence was actually calming her for once, although it meant being that much closer to that insidious pot odor.

“Why are you doing this, Frankie? I thought you hated me,” Grace said without thinking. She felt Frankie exhale beside her more than she heard it.

“First, I don’t hate you. Our auras just don’t always mesh,” Frankie began, “but also, even if I did hate you – which I’ll remind you, again, I don’t – I would never just leave you to deal with this alone.”

“You don’t hate me?” Grace asked, unable to fathom that this hippie was capable of liking someone like her.

“No, of course not,” Frankie laughed, giving Grace the slightest of squeezes from the side.

“Well,” Grace sighed, “I don’t completely hate you either, you know,” she lifted her head to meet Frankie’s skeptical gaze. “Don’t get me wrong, I find you endlessly frustrating sometimes –  okay, most of the time – but how can I hate someone who would do something like this? My own daughters probably wouldn’t have. Lord knows Robert isn’t capable of it either.”

Frankie’s eyes searched her face, for what she wasn’t sure, but it was then that the elevator surged alive again. Grace closed her eyes as she let out a heavy and shaky breath, unconsciously leaning into Frankie’s half-assed hug. Well, half-assed only because she was trying to respect Grace’s boundaries. She stayed there for a moment longer, and Frankie let her, until she glanced up and saw the elevator was only a few more floors away from their husbands’ offices. God, it was bad enough she lost her composure in front of Frankie, she didn’t need to let the entire firm see her fallen apart too.

Grace looked back at Frankie once more, and offered her a hand to get up off the floor too – although knowing Frankie, she would probably be just as content staying there. She did take the offer though, and Grace hauled her up, just as the elevator lurched to a stop again. For a brief second Grace’s heart stopped again and she felt that cold dread creep up on her, but Frankie tugged on her arm and smiled, pointing with her free hand at the floor number. They had arrived at the office, not another panic-inducing mechanical error. Before the door opened, she pulled away from Frankie and straightened out her clothes, and pulled the purse back up to its place on her shoulder.

She confidently strolled out of the elevator as if nothing had happened, and after another painful elevator ride with Frankie’s eyes burning a hole clean through her the entire time, she sat through an equally painful lunch with the peculiar woman and their husbands. Luckily, these lunches happened about as frequently as she and Robert were intimate… so she was in the clear for another good… what, a couple months?

Still, the next day, Frankie found a small vase of flowers sitting on the step outside her front door. She bent down to pick them up, and noticed a little card stuck in the middle on one of those clear sticks.

“ _Thanks for everything,_

_Grace.”_

 


End file.
